Baylor researchers Wang, Lichtarge named 2019 AAAS Fellows
Content
Two Baylor College of Medicine researchers have been named 2019 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This honor is awarded to AAAS members for their distinguished efforts toward advancing science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished.
Dr. Meng Wang, Robert C. Fyfe Endowed Chair on Aging and professor at the Huffington Center on Aging and in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor, was elected in the section of biological sciences for pioneering contributions to the field of molecular genetics, particularly mechanisms underlying diseases of aging in the C. elegans model system relevant to human health.
Dr. Olivier Lichtarge, Cullen Foundation Endowed Professor of molecular and human genetics and professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and pharmacology at Baylor, was elected in the section of biological sciences for distinguished contributions to field of computational biology through an evolutionary trace approach to protein engineering and genomic medicine.
“It is my great honor to be named as an AAAS Fellow this year,” said Wang, member of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “AAAS has been speaking out for science and advocating innovation throughout the world for nearly 170 years. I truly value its mission to advance science for the benefit of all people.”
“This honor acknowledges the work of so many graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in my lab,” said Lichtarge, director of the Computational and Integrative Biomedical Research Center and member of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor. “We mix evolution with math and physics to understand complex diseases, and to our excitement, the practical applications are becoming apparent. There still is so much more to do.”
Members of the AAAS, the world’s largest general scientific society, nominate each Fellow while the organization’s council, including its president, makes the final vote. This year, AAAS awarded 443 new Fellows who will be presented with an official certificate and pin on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2020, at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Seattle.
AAAS includes nearly 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals with a goal of advancing science and serving society through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement and more.
Past Baylor AAAS Fellows include Drs. Thomas C. Caskey (1990), Bert O’Malley (1995), James Lupski (1996), Mary K. Estes (1999), Susan Rosenberg (2010), Margaret “Peggy” Goodell (2014), Brendan Lee (2014), Theodore Wensel (2014), David Nelson (2014), Michael A. Grusak (2015), Jeffrey Rosen (2015), Philip J. Hastings (2017), Jeffrey L. Noebels (2017) and Nancy Moreno (2018).